


A Talk Among Ruins

by SleepySpeedster



Category: The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Light Angst, Short, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23817163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepySpeedster/pseuds/SleepySpeedster
Summary: Set after his death Thad returns and has a talk with Meloni about his past actions and the Thawne family.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	A Talk Among Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> I've always wanted to have Thad and Meloni meet and talk, and potentially bond/come to an understanding over having the worst father/father figure ever. I was also inspired to write this fic after finding a comic panel with Meloni where she says her father, President Thawne, ruined her life and happiness with a vengeance. It reminded me so much of Thad and how that was also his life thanks to President Thawne.  
> 
> 
> **** Comments, questions, and reactions are 100% welcomed and greatly appreciated! Tell me what you liked, questions you have, anything! Give this work a kudos if you liked it. Comments and kudos help me to create more work and figure out what I should work on. ****
> 
> Really, comments help me even if you're just saying that you liked something, or didn't understand something! I'm open to any and all comments and questions!

One has to come before the other doesn’t it? Were you ruined first? Or did you ruin everything?

Does it even matter?

Those question haunt Thad as he sits at the small white kitchen table unfamiliar to him. His hands are clenched upon it, his knuckles white on one hand, and scuffed an irritated bright red with open wounds on the other. His eyes glance around the kitchen. He’s not looking for anything in particular. He only wants to avoid staring at her back, but inevitably he sees everything else in this place that could only loosely be called a home. The color seemed gone from the kitchen. The walls, the cabinets, the fridge, everything. It was stark white like a laboratory, and didn’t feel like a choice in decor she would make. It felt too clean, too bright, too fake, and too much like President Thawne had thrown his own daughter in a pretty birdcage.

Or rather this was just what happened when you had everything you loved taken away from you.

And here Thad was to blame.

A glass of water was set by him with a thud, and the chair opposite of him scratched against the white tiled floor.

“Why are you here?” Meloni’s voice was cold as her amber eyes bore into his own yellow ones. The ones that were the exact same as her own son, but that was where the similarities ended. This young man was more of an echo of her father than he was of her son. 

He knew the disdain in her eyes well. Not personally of course. This was the first time Thad had ever met Meloni Thawne. But he was intimately familiar with hatred from others, and himself.

“I’m sorry.” He uttered, and then clarified with a stutter, “I-I came here to say I’m sorry.” His eyes were locked with her own only for a moment before they swept downcast and focused upon the stale white table.

Meloni was silent as she stared him down still. He could say those two words, he could say them over and over again until the end of either one of their days and it would change nothing. The corner of her lip twitched further into a frown.

“‘I’m sorry’ won’t bring my son back, _Thaddeus_.” Her voice was firm, much stronger than she felt herself as her gaze dipped to her hands. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he got to come back, but her son didn’t.

“I know.” The corner of his lip twitched and his frown deepened, “It’s just ‘Thad’.” He murmured quietly. It was meaningless to Meloni, but an important distinction to himself. He wasn't like his father.

“If you’re here for forgiveness. You won’t find it.”

“I’m not.” He shakes his head, firm with his conviction, “That’s not why—. You have a right to be angry….Furious….To hate me.”

“Then why are you here? Why are you _here_ opening up old wounds?!” She yelled banging her fist upon the table causing the clone to flinch.

For the first time this evening Thad looked Meloni in the eyes. His gold ones against her amber ones, “Because you of all people deserve an apology for what…he’s done to you.” His hands clenched tighter, his knuckles white. “You’re his daughter. You’re his blood and he still hurt you. You—You didn’t deserve that.” 

The young man’s brows furrowed further in thought. It almost looked as if he couldn’t understand it, but he did. He understood from first hand that President Thawne used anyone how he saw fit. Wasn’t his life a testament to that?

“You didn’t deserve to lose your husband or your son to such a ridiculous and empty feud.” His nails dug further into his flesh of his palms.

Meloni had never been good at hiding her emotions. If she was angry or frustrated as a little girl, her father had always known. But now the only thing her terrible father knew was that she would never forgive him. And as she watched him she could see the same in him. He couldn’t help show that he was frustrated. That he hated the man he once thought of as a father. Beyond all those little mannerism that reminded her of her father, he also reminded her of the tiniest bit of herself. That frustrated stubborn child who couldn’t do anything right in this world.

“And what about you?”

He looked at her with confusion abound, “What?”  
  
“I lost my husband to my father’s hatred. If you can see that stupid feud for what is then why did I lose my son as well?”

Thad’s hands clenched upon the table.

“Why was it that you wanted my son dead?”

Thad knew she wanted any answer than the one he could give her, but that wouldn't be the truth. And even if they both despised it they both deserved the truth, “I hated him.”

Maybe he was just like the rest of the Thawnes.

“But not because of the feud. Not in the _end_ at least.” 

It would be a lie for Thad to say he had gained his first pieces of clarity after his death. The first had been when he had ran from Max’s offer. He had realized in that moment that he was nothing more than a tool to his ‘father’, that he never been loved or experienced familial love in his entire existence (he could barely call it 'a life' until then), and that the Allen-Thawne feud was nothing more than a lie that had been perpetuated for far too long. His second was after Bart’s death at his own hands.

“I killed him because I couldn’t stand being his clone. Being defined by him until I died. He could go on with his life without thinking about me for a moment, he could live, he could love and be loved by his family, and I was stuck being ‘Bart’s clone’.” 

His lesser.

A failed copy.

A sociopath with his face.

“I was jealous.” There was no guessing, or supposing. Thad knew his life had been empty from the start to the finish. It just took one bloody decision to solidify it. With Bart’s blood on his hands he had nothing. The victory he had been looking for. The one goal he had all his life. The one that would prove that he was more than Bart’s clone, had only solidified the fact he had nothing else.

And who’s fault was that?

Had he ruined himself with his own decisions? Or had he been ruined from the start?

Meloni stared at the young man and wondered just that. None of what Thad said was “normal”. He had been made without a thought in regard to himself. He was considered a _thing_ first, and that wasn’t _fair_.

There would never be a reason good enough to quell the anger she held toward Thad for killing her son, but beneath it she was coming to her own realizations now.

They had been opposite sides of a coin when it came to Thawnes. He had once been loyal, a perfect facsimile of a son to the Thawne line, and she had been rebellious, deviant, and anything but the perfect daughter.

However, in the end…they both turned out like this.

Hurt by the same family.

Hurt by the same man they had trusted and looked up to once a long time ago.

“He ruined your life and happiness like he did mine, didn’t he?” She softly spoke staring at Thad.

They both had been ruined.

Neither one of them ever had a chance to come out unscathed.

**Author's Note:**

> **** Comments, questions, and reactions are 100% welcomed and greatly appreciated! Tell me what you liked, questions you have, anything! Give this work a kudos if you liked it. Comments and kudos help me to create more work and figure out what I should work on. ****
> 
> Really, comments help me even if you're just saying that you liked something, or didn't understand something! I'm open to any and all comments and questions!


End file.
